Sooo... I took the time to read this angry rant, but couldn't muster the willpower to watch the video you made, you know, the so-called stand-up comedy. Do you realize that's on there forever now, as Steem isn't likely to budge even one fraction of an inch because of this lengthy threat of yours? Look, I was even willing to stay fairly neutral on your typical whale-behavior and bid-bot abuse in my angry rant about egotistical behavior on an blockchain that's designed to have maximum growth if everybody just acted with that community in mind instead of just their own pockets. If you're really the sport you say you are, if you even have the slightest sense of humor and if you have but a fraction of the concern for others you claim to have, you'll read, upvote, resteem and comment on this post: Sh*t-Post! Read At Own Risk! (Braincells Might Perish!). This might be a first small step toward redemption...

Now that we have that shameless plug of my own post, which I know you'll appreciate since plugging yourself is all you seem to do, out of the way let me say that you're not doing yourself or your brothers in arms any good by posting this. "Do as I say or I will leave" doesn't really work well on a community of people that found each-other mainly because of a shared longing for freedom. Most of us are mature enough to realize that there's no such thing as "absolute" freedom of any kind, not even the oral or verbal kind. When your freedom to say what you want hinders my freedom to do the same, you're actually not advocating freedom, you're advocating hierarchy. You're right that one negative experience leaves a bigger impression than 10 positive ones, but that's life my friend and goes for a lot more than just upvotes or flags.

This is also the reason why almost all of us are very hesitant to use that flag-option: we know how it must feel. I never ever flagged anyone in all 3 months I've been active here and The Lord (Jerry?) knows I've seen a lot of crap that doesn't deserve the insane earnings they accumulated. Oh wait... I did flag someone once: I flagged myself just as a fun experiment, to see what it does.

What I'm trying to say here is that "normal" posts don't get flagged under normal circumstances. From what I've seen it's mostly comments that fall in the "beggar" category or the "spam" category being downvoted by spam-bots or blatant copying by the (in)famous cheetah bot, like "I like this post a lot! I upvoted it too! Can you please upvote and follow me too?" copy-pasted in 100 posts. If those users used that energy to make a picture of the street they live in and tell a funny anekdote on what happened there yesterday, they would make the same small amount of money if their obvious free-ride comments were being left alone. They would even have a chance at the occasional massive upvotes if they strike gold with a particularly beautiful photograph or funny text. Then they would be starting with relative crap, but getting better over time.

You really have to do something really insulting, harmful to the blockchain or otherwise do something so bad, that people get over that initial hesitance and actually flag your post. That's my experience until now and I like it that way. Sure it's not perfect and something needs to be done about the misuse of economical power that now fills the Trending page with mediocrity. Something has to be done about the many well intending communities that require the use of a specific tag to gain the benefits they offer. Let's say I write a post, a good one about something interesting, but I tag it with #ocd-resteem, #steemstem, #msp-whatever, #steemrepo.... how can any new potential users ever find the post by searching on the actual topic of the post? These are things worth talking about, ranting about even. But not this, Jerry, not this.